Page 18 - James Ward - A Lioness with a Heron

TATE BRITAIN, LONDON

Fig. 1

During most of Ward’s career, his reputation as Britain’s greatest animal painter was unassailable and
he himself viewed Lioness with a Heron as a masterwork, writing: ‘The world knows nothing of what I
can do in that way but by Mr Earle’s [sic] picture’.6 Devoid of any overt sense of allegory, and on a far
more comprehensive scale than his epic Gordale Scar (Fig. 1),7 exhibited the previous year, in Lioness
with a Heron Ward struck a perfect balance between the exotic and the elemental; he depicted a wild
animal as no more nor less than what it was, and in so doing presented Regency audiences with an
unprecedented expression of the sublime. It was a work that was lauded by critics. When first displayed
to the public at the British Institution, the fine arts correspondent for The Literary Gazette singled the
picture out for praise, commenting:

‘James Ward holds a distinguished rank in the present exhibition. He has fewer pictures than he had last season at Somerset House;
but they are all of the first quality... The Lioness disturbed in devouring a Heron is a noble representation of savage nature. The
expression of rage is astonishingly fine. The bold lines of the distant mountains; the majestic volume of clouds sailing along the
skies; the deep toned blue-ish and purple-ish tints in the off-skip; with the verdurous browns of the near scenery; and the solemn
brightness and impressive union of the whole, confer an imposing grandeur on this commanding picture... The master here shines
forth with superior lustre. He stands upon a rock of elevation without a competitor; and we may safely affirm that there is a
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.

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